Cathedrals of urban modernity: the first museums of contemporary art, 1800-1930.

Cathedrals of urban modernity: the first museums of contemporary art, 1800-1930. Historical Urban Studies. Aldershot, Hampshire, UK/Brookfield,Vermont, USA: Ashgate, 1998. Pp. xiii, 322. Black and white plates,bibliography, index. Although the title of J. Pedro Lorente's book alludes to thewell-known metaphor of the museum as a temple of art, it is not as asite for religiosity re��li��gi��os��i��ty?n.1. The quality of being religious.2. Excessive or affected piety.Noun 1. religiosity - exaggerated or affected piety and religious zealreligiousism, pietism, religionism that this book deals with its subject, but as asite for the social discourse of culture. Lorente's history of theearly establishment of museums of contemporary art is a history of ideas The history of ideas is a field of research in history that deals with the expression, preservation, and change of human ideas over time. The history of ideas is a sister-discipline to, or a particular approach within, intellectual history. about art, of taste and of the politics of art patronage in the period1900-1930 and, in fact, beyond. The author acknowledges his debt to thehistorical tradition of art and its methods, but this study is more of apost-structuralist attempt to describe the dynamics of power in theinstitutionalisation This article or section needs sourcesorreferences that appear in reliable, third-party publications. Alone, primary sources and sources affiliated with the subject of this article are not sufficient for an accurate encyclopedia article. of the modern during the nineteenth and twentiethcenturies. Although references are made to Haskell's studies of thehistory of taste and art collecting, Lorente probably owes more toFoucault's concept of "human archeology." He presents uswith a convincing deconstruction of the first museums of modernity inEurope and North America, and of the cultural construction of thehistory of art itself through the selective preservation of certainworks. The political issues, historical tensions, economic conditionsand personalities are all dealt with even-handedly and sometimes withhumour as well. Unfortunately, this otherwise well-organized and clearlyconceived study is plagued by occasional lapses in English languageusage. Nonetheless, the intellectual value of the analysis presentedhere is not diminished by its weak prepositions. Lorente's bookoffers insights into the ideologies that produced, and were themselvesproduced, by the establishment of the first museums of modern art. The creation of museums of contemporary art in the nineteenthcentury came about in the wake of profound social, political, andeconomic movements. Monarchist mon��ar��chism?n.1. The system or principles of monarchy.2. Belief in or advocacy of monarchy.mon and republican strategies for therestoration of former palaces as propaganda "palaces of thepeople" competed with bourgeois ambitions and self-interestedphilanthropy in the creation of purpose-built galleries. Privatesponsors acted as catalysts in the transformation of publicart-collecting as it shifted from the leisurely privilege of the rulingclass and the reluctant responsibility of the state to the idealistdesigns of city planners and, most recently, to the ardentself-determination of the artists themselves. Drawing on hisconsiderable knowledge of the primary sources and documents that isevident throughout the book, Lorente tells his stories of all thesedifferences with grace and erudition er��u��di��tion?n.Deep, extensive learning. See Synonyms at knowledge.Eruditionof editors—Hare.Noun 1. . Issues of time and space are recurrent themes in this study.Chronology and geography determine the book's shape, focussing thediscussion on decisive moments of conceptualization in specificlocations, those large centres such as Paris and Vienna where competingideologies were contested. Nations, cities, and neighbourhoods eachcompeted with each other in the political race to commodify com��mod��i��fy?tr.v. com��mod��i��fied, com��mod��i��fy��ing, com��mod��i��fiesTo turn into or treat as a commodity; make commercial: "Such music . . . commodifies the worst sorts of . . . the modern.The suburban park vied with the urban centre, the utopian "whitecube" challenged the prestige of the classical monuments as thesite for the display and rhetoric of modernity in art. The tensionbetween building a permanent collection and exhibiting new work became astruggle between individual curators and among government factions asacademics and selection committees exerted their control over theanointing of new (but preferably dead) "masters." How and bywhom these collections would be viewed was also contested by directorsand benefactors. In one example, the author reveals the hypocrisy of thesupposedly populist intentions of the South Kensington museum South Kensington Museum:see Victoria and Albert Museum. complex inLondon where the days of free admission were not so much instituted toserve the poor as to reserve the days of paid admission for the wealthyin order that they might enjoy the galleries in peace and quiet. The debates over the naming of these new institutions is telling:political choices had to be made between celebrating either the national(or civic) identity of a new museum or its internationalist modernity.The term "modern" itself begged the question of whatconstituted the collection that would be housed and which works would beacquired. A museum of "living art" is, after all, an oxymoron.Fascism and the conservative taste of some curators would mean theexclusion of certain radical stylistic movements within"modernist" tendencies, such as the suppression ofExpressionism in Nazi Germany. ("Modernism" is a moment in thehistory of art, modernity is an attitude to the past.) Just where thepast ends and the present begins is a question of interpretation; theperiodization Periodization is the attempt to categorize or divide time into discrete named blocks. The result is a descriptive abstraction that provides a useful handle on periods of time with relatively stable characteristics. of art production that coincided with the concerted driveto establish museums of new and recent art in the nineteenth century notonly involved the erection and renovation of buildings, but theconstruction and revision of the history of art itself. The adoption ofterms, such as "contemporary" rather than "modern"and "institute" instead of "museum", mark theAmerican transformation of European struggles over nomenclature andself-representation. All contemporary art eventually becomes the art of the past. The"universal survey museum" is just as much an illusion as anyprojected "museum of living art." Lorente cites GertrudeStein, who once said of New York's MoMA that it could either be amuseum or modern but not both. Eventually the "museums of modernart" turned into fossilized musseums of nineteenth century art,just as the more recently established institutes of contemporary arthave become permanent collections of early twentieth century art.Museums such as MoMA have become iconic institutions in themselves,trapped in their own histories. In presenting a chronological narrative of the establishment ofmuseums of modernity, Lorente risks falling back on the methods oftraditional art history, itself a positivist discipline with a vision ofprogressive evolution. Consequently the book could have mirrored thevery modernist illusion he attempts to explain. Writing about themuseum, Donald Preziosi has described the "intractability of theinstitution to critical inquiry or sociohistorical analysis ... themodern discourse on the subject remains complicit com��plic��it?adj.Associated with or participating in a questionable act or a crime; having complicity: newspapers complicit with the propaganda arm of a dictatorship. with the museum'smost fundamental programmatic mission -- the fabrication and maintenanceof modernity." (1) But Lorente has taken on Preziosi'schallenge and written an interesting study. He has avoided making simplecausal relationships, rejected the mechanistic and organic models oncepreferred, and refused the value judgements that could havecharacterized his narrative, allowing instead for contradiction, mixedmotives and the overlapping of agendas in this cross-cultural andinter-disciplinary analysis of the establishment of the first museums ofcontemporary art. Claudine Majzels Department of History University of Winnipeg The University of Winnipeg (U of W) is a public university in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada that focuses primarily on undergraduate education. The U of W's founding colleges were Manitoba College and Wesley College, which merged to form United College in 1938. (1) . Donald Preziosi. "Modernity Again: The Museum asTrompe-l'oeil." Peter Brunette and David Wills, eds.Deconstruction and the Visual Arts: Art, Media, Architecture.(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press (known colloquially as CUP) is a publisher given a Royal Charter by Henry VIII in 1534, and one of the two privileged presses (the other being Oxford University Press). , 1994), p. 145.